This might sound a little bit silly but please bear with me. Somehow I changed my default display font, the one that Windows uses for system dialog boxes, accept/cancel buttons, pretty much everything in the system (it even goes as far as to change how my the text in my web browser appears). Now everything that it's affected looks like under the effects of the bold button in office (very black and very thick words). This is an inconvenience for example on some mail accounts who use this effect to display unread messages. Is there any way to return it to its default state, non "bold" typography for the whole system?

Since Windows Vista, I haven't changed the default Windows font. They did a great job designing Segoe UI as he font for all UI stuff. So simple, so readable, so clean.
–
thenonhackerSep 11 '09 at 22:36

4 Answers
4

Go through each item and reset fonts (where appropriate) to Segoe UI 9pt, not bold, not italic. (All the settings in a default Win7 or Vista machine will be Segoe UI 9pt.)

If this doesn't work -- or I should say, if all your settings here are already Segoe UI 9pt -- then you have probably inadvertently changed your ClearType settings. ClearType is how Windows draws fonts on-screen, and depending on the screen, different settings will be needed for optimal font display.

To fix this in Win7:

Right-click the desktop. Choose "Personalize."

Click "Display"

Click "Adjust ClearType Text"

A window will pop up. Make sure its checkbox ("Turn on ClearType") is checked. Click "Next."

Follow the prompts through the wizard, adjusting until the fonts look "right" again.

Comment by @bacizone: I am not sure this is the answer for the question. Even after copying back the original Win 7 fonts and activating them, they do not come back. My Twitter page looks terrible with the bold letters. Any other idea?
–
Ivo Flipse♦Apr 14 '10 at 14:06

If I put both index fingers on the mouse pad and swipe one left or right it changed the font size. Hold your right finger still and slide the left finger to the left to make it smaller and to the right to make it larger.